Current in-service education and training programmes (INSET) are often found to be unsatisfactory due to the fact that they do not provide the teachers with opportunities to be actively involved in their development and to reflect on their teaching experiences. This study presents an INSET programme in which Turkish EFL teachers were provided with…

In the state of Texas, whose standardized, high-stakes test-based accountability system became the model for the nation's most comprehensive federal education policy, more than 135,000 youth are lost from the state's high schools every year. Dropout rates are highest for African American and Latino youth, more than 60% for the students we…

The acquisition of English verbal morphology has been mostly tested as a second language (L2) in English-speaking settings (Bardovi-Harlig, 1992a, 1992b, 1992c, 1998; Bardovi-Harlig & Bergstrom, 1996; Bayley, 1991, 1994), more rarely as a foreign language (e.g., Robison, 1990, 1995), in only one cross-sectional study with native speakers of French…

Research on second language (L2) phonetic learning indicates that, even in adults, segmental acquisition remains possible through L2 experience. However, the findings of previous cross-sectional studies of vowel and consonant learning have proved difficult to interpret. In this longitudinal investigation of 44 recent arrivals in Canada,…

This article examines, from a broad historical perspective, how Australia's negative "linguistic culture" has shaped languages education in our country. Language teachers' pre- and inservice training does not often address this topic. Yet to be able to anchor one's profession within a historical, sociocultural, and political perspective,…

An urban school district and a university developed a curriculum emphasizing academic language for its English language learners (ELL) students. The partnership began when the district's elementary ESL coordinator approached three university faculty for support in developing a three-year summer school curriculum emphasizing mathematics and science…

This paper explores methodological issues related to research into second language listening strategies. We argue that a number of central questions regarding research methodology in this line of enquiry are underexamined, and we engage in the discussion of three key methodological questions: (1) To what extent is a verbal report a valid and…

Descriptions of speech act realisations of native and non-native speakers abound in the cross-cultural and interlanguage pragmatics literature. Yet, what is lacking is an analysis of the cognitive processes involved in the production of speech acts. This study examines the cognitive processes and perceptions of learners of Spanish when refusing…

Over 3 million people speak Arabic as a first language in the USA and almost all of them are native-born Americans. Efforts in recent decades to provide support, at both local and governmental levels, for the teaching of Arabic as a heritage language are described. Reflecting on the development of his own personal literacies and his teaching…

After 18 months of research and many practice sessions, Sponge opened in the fall of 2005. This year, Sponge will provide language classes for over 350 children from newborn to seven years in the Seattle area. This language program offers Spanish, Mandarin, French and Japanese--all taught by native speakers. While the staff sets out to create a…

This paper explores ways in which language ideology is linked to maintenance of Korean as a heritage language by Koreans in America. The data for this ethnographic study come from three separate sources: 1) a Korean language program at an American university; 2) a community-based ESL program for Korean seniors; and 3) a recently immigrated Korean…

The overall aim of this study is to deepen our knowledge about the attitudes of teachers at the upper level of the Finland-Swedish comprehensive school towards the treatment of culture in English foreign language (EFL) teaching. More specifically, the questions are how teachers interpret the concept "culture" in English foreign language…

In this study we tracked the development of the "passe compose" in second-language learners of French whose first language is English. Although the "passe compose" is a highly used tense among native speakers of French and it appears to present particular difficulty for first-language English speakers, its second-language development has been…

A key issue, which has undermined the development of community/heritage language teaching in the UK over recent decades, has been the need to define an appropriate pedagogical approach which takes account of the bilingual and bicultural background of the majority of learners studying these languages. Within the National Curriculum, community…

This paper represents an earnest attempt to identify specific pedagogical roles for blogs in language learning. After briefly describing various types of blogs and defining their purposes (Herring "et al.", 2005) we attempt to accommodate their position and application within language teaching (Thorne & Scott Payne, 2005), relating evidence from…